A Return to Sweetness & Light

Alien creatures on an alien planet with the grade 2's.
One boy chose to depict his creation living beneath the dim light of a black hole type sun, while another fellow placed his deep in an ocean.
I guide them through a process where we try to brainstorm ways to mash together characteristics from 2 or 3 very dissimilar animals, then compose an entirely new form in a (somewhat?!) believable fashion. Extra points as always for inventing a name for the organism and its planet.

Double Whammy

when the storm clouds gather in xxxx's head, it can change the colour of her hair. when the hurricane rips apart her inner landscape, turning streets into toxic streams of debris, she'll strip our surroundings down to bare, shining sterility, the smiling picture of perfect order. right now our apartment is so clean it should be bleached holy white. xxxxy cut her hair off today and swept it into the trash. these rooms are so clear, so empty you could choke. you shiver to think of the chaos inside when she's made the outside so pure.

TwinB was describing her sister 2 years ago when she wrote this, but it probably could apply again today. I wish TwinA could have been satisfied with the drastic haircut. I wish she would have remembered to call me...but then like she said, she wasn't really in a thinking kind of mood. TwinB tried to reassure me with "they're more like beginner cuts really..."
I just didn't expect there to be so many*.



*about 3 dozen - picture a 4" wide lattice from hip to ankle

A Closed Door

Kildala Elementary will be closing June 2009. Within a day of the announcement one anonymous 'artist'/malcontent contributed their own unsolicited image to our mural.

I kind of feel the same way; I almost want to build on this, however, when the weather gets warmer I will drag my paint back down there and fix it.

Once the school closes, children will be expected to walk to one of 2 remaining elementary schools and that walk includes a kilometer long hill. In our weather. There was the occassional day when my kids were young when I didn't feel comfortable sending them the half block to their school. 30 centimeter deep puddles in the snow will do that.
Many families in Kildala don't own cars. Some families don't have parents who'll wake up in time to send their kids to school.
wtf - they're expendable.
Who'll even notice?

Save Me

'member how TwinB's nice new doctor doubled her Prozac awhile back? Why, just see how it's borne fruit! She recently started writing again and was able to go a few days without certain inhaleables for the first time in over a year and a half.

The snippets she composes are directed (at least mentally) to a friend back home.


Where am I, what night is it?
...
I hate these lights on the train at night, I guess there's just never anywhere to hide. So watch me crawl into a cave. Watch me peek out that little window - the only window in my bomb shelter basement suite. Watch that slit of cracked glass under the porch. and wait for two blue eyes to appear, and a hand.
Rabbit eyes, burrow eyes and a hand at the window to let the smoke out. Then back down because it's not safe mr. rabbit, they have lights out there you can't hide from. Out there it's light and noise and EYES, eyes like gun barrels shooting straight back into yours little rabbit, straight back into your own wide black eyes.
Save me Merle Rxxxxxxxxxx - send eagles.
Save me Merle Rxxxxxxxxxx - send crows.
Save me -send the tide across the praries, let it flood out all the burrows and pull me back to the coast, all the way out to sea.
Out to sea.

And yes, it is an improvement.

Buried 'Treasure'

They don't bite or sting. They're extremely curious -some might even say nosy- and love to observe and touch everything! *

Here's an undersea critter that I designed for TwinB back when she was at AI composing a storyboard for a short video. Her concept was a little on the complex side so the team decided to go with another members' plot.
TwinB later succumbed to her illness, dropped out of school and came home to sit through her long season of disability. This particular sketchbook pretty much just hung out in a drawer for 4 years. I love some of the ideas in her storyboard and hope that she'll have them fully developed in the near future. The nice new doctor has doubled up her Prozac so maybe that'll kick start the creative urge.

*um...hey!...that's me, distilled to the basics!

Owie!! Art Studio Hurt!

Bent down in to grab something in the studio and got a sharp piece of driftwood to the eye - good thing I wear glasses because they deflected it just a hair, so that it didn't go right into my brain.
Now I have a cut over my right eyelid.
And a strong resolve to clean & re-organize the studio with a little more thought devoted to proper storage.

Festive 50th

This particular work has been snowed on, thus obscuring the original message, but it appears to be a birthday greeting. What could be more heartwarming or special than evidence that someone cares enough to graffiti your snowpile in honour of a 50th birthday??